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Monday, 29 July 2013

Starting Small

Learn to focus on what will make your life better.

Quite often we hear people talk
about setting goals. I will never argue about the power of goal setting, however,
I think that sometimes we get so focused on the big goals that we forget about
the small goals that can be achieved. Your small goals are just as important as
the big goals, in fact, they can even be more important.

There is a whole range of names for the small goals in our
lives. Some call them short term goals, others strategic plans, however, whatever
the name, they are the goals that must be done first, in order to achieve your
long term, or big goals. They are the steps to the ultimate outcome that we
what in our lives, yet they can be easily forgotten or even put off because
they seem too hard.

One of the problems with our smaller goals is that this is
where the fiddly, tricky and tedious stuff occurs. The big goals maybe to lose
weight, but the small goal is where you need to go out and walk every day, rain,
hail or shine. Small goals are the effort and the hard work, and most people, even
me, what to avoid the hard work. Sure, we all want to achieve our goals and get
the rewards, but we just don’t want to have to work on the annoying stuff.

Yet, it is here with the small stuff that you get your
greatest rewards. Your small goals are the things that you can sit back at the
end of the day and say “I did that”. These are the proud moments that you have
in life. It’s when you step back into a warm house after forcing yourself to go
out and walk in the cold, rain, wind or all three. The moment when you step
back and look at the room you just painted. No one will ever deny that it was
hard, but you put the effort in, you’re got through it and now it works, or
looks good, or the jeans just fit a bit better. Plus you also have the
satisfaction of knowing that you are also one step closer to your final desired
outcome.

The trick to completing the small goals is simply just doing
them. We often think about the pain it will cause us to do whatever it is we
want to do, so we procrastinate. We will make excuses and put things off, just
so that we don’t have to do the work right now. The key is to not think about
what it feels like to do the work, but how it will feel at the end. Focus on
how good it will feel when you have finished painting the room, or gone for that
walk. How good will it feel when you can step back and review your hard work?
How good will it feel to get into those clothes that are now one size smaller?

What you have done is change your focus from a negative to a
positive. You will notice that all of the aches and pains will disappear. The
paint in your hair, on your face and dripping off your hands will not be a
problem, when you know you how good it will be to finish. In fact, you will not
have to wait till the end to feel good, as the knowledge of why you are doing
it will make you feel good while you are doing it.

So let’s stop putting things of because we don’t want to suffer
at the moment. Stop thinking about how your small goal can be a problem, and
start to think about how good it will feel to achieve you goal. Focus on how
you will feel to achieve you dreams. This is how motivated people achieve their
goals and I know you can start doing it as well.